"Yet I'm backing him up." She paused."I wonder if you'll understand? What I've most wanted for him, and shall want for Effie, is that they shall always feel free to make their own mistakes, and never, if possible, be persuaded to make other people's.Even if Owen's marriage is a mistake, and has to be paid for, I believe he'll learn and grow in the paying.Of course I can't make Madame de Chantelle see this; but I can remind her that, with his character--his big rushes of impulse, his odd intervals of ebb and apathy--she may drive him into some worse blunder if she thwarts him now.""And you mean to break the news to her as soon as she comes back from Ouchy?""As soon as I see my way to it.She knows the girl and likes her: that's our hope.And yet it may, in the end, prove our danger, make it harder for us all, when she learns the truth, than if Owen had chosen a stranger.I can't tell you more till I've told her: I've promised Owen not to tell any one.All I ask you is to give me time, to give me a few days at any rate She's been wonderfully 'nice,' as she would call it, about you, and about the fact of my having soon to leave Givre; but that, again, may make it harder for Owen.
At any rate, you can see, can't you, how it makes me want to stand by him? You see, I couldn't bear it if the least fraction of my happiness seemed to be stolen from his--as if it were a little scrap of happiness that had to be pieced out with other people's!" She clasped her hands on Darrow's arm."I want our life to be like a house with all the windows lit: I'd like to string lanterns from the roof and chimneys!"She ended with an inward tremor.All through her exposition and her appeal she had told herself that the moment could hardly have been less well chosen.In Darrow's place she would have felt, as he doubtless did, that her carefully developed argument was only the disguise of an habitual indecision.It was the hour of all others when she would have liked to affirm herself by brushing aside every obstacle to his wishes; yet it was only by opposing them that she could show the strength of character she wanted him to feel in her.
But as she talked she began to see that Darrow's face gave back no reflection of her words, that he continued to wear the abstracted look of a man who is not listening to what is said to him.It caused her a slight pang to discover that his thoughts could wander at such a moment; then, with a flush of joy she perceived the reason.
In some undefinable way she had become aware, without turning her head, that he was steeped in the sense of her nearness, absorbed in contemplating the details of her face and dress; and the discovery made the words throng to her lips.She felt herself speak with ease, authority, conviction.She said to herself: "He doesn't care what Isay--it's enough that I say it--even if it's stupid he'll like me better for it..." She knew that every inflexion of her voice, every gesture, every characteristic of her person--its very defects, the fact that her forehead was too high, that her eyes were not large enough, that her hands, though slender, were not small, and that the fingers did not taper--she knew that these deficiencies were so many channels through which her influence streamed to him; that she pleased him in spite of them, perhaps because of them;that he wanted her as she was, and not as she would have liked to be; and for the first time she felt in her veins the security and lightness of happy love.
They reached the court and walked under the limes toward the house.The hall door stood wide, and through the windows opening on the terrace the sun slanted across the black and white floor, the faded tapestry chairs, and Darrow's travelling coat and cap, which lay among the cloaks and rugs piled on a bench against the wall.
The sight of these garments, lying among her own wraps, gave her a sense of homely intimacy.It was as if her happiness came down from the skies and took on the plain dress of daily things.At last she seemed to hold it in her hand.
As they entered the hall her eye lit on an unstamped note conspicuously placed on the table.
"From Owen! He must have rushed off somewhere in the motor."She felt a secret stir of pleasure at the immediate inference that she and Darrow would probably lunch alone.
Then she opened the note and stared at it in wonder.
"Dear," Owen wrote, "after what you said yesterday I can't wait another hour, and I'm off to Francheuil, to catch the Dijon express and travel back with them.Don't be frightened; I won't speak unless it's safe to.Trust me for that--but I had to go."She looked up slowly.
"He's gone to Dijon to meet his grandmother.Oh, I hope Ihaven't made a mistake!"
"You? Why, what have you to do with his going to Dijon?"She hesitated."The day before yesterday I told him, for the first time, that I meant to see him through, no matter what happened.And I'm afraid he's lost his head, and will be imprudent and spoil things.You see, I hadn't meant to say a word to him till I'd had time to prepare Madame de Chantelle."She felt that Darrow was looking at her and reading her thoughts, and the colour flew to her face."Yes: it was when I heard you were coming that I told him.I wanted him to feel as I felt...it seemed too unkind to make him wait!"Her hand was in his, and his arm rested for a moment on her shoulder.
"It WOULD have been too unkind to make him wait."They moved side by side toward the stairs.Through the haze of bliss enveloping her, Owen's affairs seemed curiously unimportant and remote.Nothing really mattered but this torrent of light in her veins.She put her foot on the lowest step, saying: "It's nearly luncheon time--I must take off my hat..." and as she started up the stairs Darrow stood below in the hall and watched her.But the distance between them did not make him seem less near: it was as if his thoughts moved with her and touched her like endearing hands.
